as if willing a reply, but as the film aficionados rambled on, it became ever more clear that she wasn’t there.
That wouldn’t stop him from trying again tomorrow night. Nor would it stop him from telling her how he felt—tonight.
“i’m so sorry,” he typed, then paused for several seconds. Rudy’s apology was a total non sequitur in the film debate, butif she was out there waiting in silence, she would know what he was talking about. She knew his screen name. She would know he was apologizing to her. And she would know what he was sorry about.
It was breaking protocol to use anything but a screen name, but invoking a real name might help convey the depth of his feelings.
“it’s from the heart, peyton,” he added, then clicked his mouse and exited the chat room.
9
HOME. AFTER THREE NIGHTS IN THE HOSPITAL, IT FELT GOOD TO BE there — for Kevin almost as much as Peyton.
Home was on Magnolia Street, two blocks north of famed Newbury Street, where magnificent old Victorian residences blended with new galleries, smart shops, and outdoor cafés that, especially in warmer weather, lent the area a certain continental élan. Even though it was pricey, Peyton had insisted on taking the apartment. Kevin knew her angle. He wasn’t happy about staying in Boston after she’d finished med school, so she dropped him right in the heart of what was considered the place for the young and chic to see and be seen.
Ironically, the accident afforded them their first real opportunity to share the place together, alone. Missing work to nurse his wife back to health had also helped Kevin keep his mind off his mistakes; it kept Sandra at bay.
Kevin didn’t fully understand the thing with Sandra, having never intended anything sexual between them. She was just good company and a good friend at Marston & Wheeler, a breath of fresh air at a law firm, where most associates competed like gladiators. Sandra had an unusual wisdom and maturity about her. Although she was just a second-year associate, she was ten years older than Kevin. After graduating from Columbia Law School, she’d given up a career to marry a widower and raise three stepchildren. Theywere driving home from Dartmouth, having just dropped off the youngest child for the fall semester, when her husband of twelve years told her about the lover he’d kept for the past eleven. To her credit, Sandra picked herself up and landed a job at Boston’s top law firm, starting at the bottom, determined to make up for the thirteen years she’d lost.
Kevin knew it was stupid to go to bed with a coworker, but that was actually what had made it so easy. When Kevin volunteered to work on the big bank-fraud investigation in Providence because “there was no one to go home to back in Boston anyway,” Sandra quickly convinced the senior partner to make her the junior associate on the case. She and Kevin worked long hours, just the two of them. After two months of traveling back and forth from Providence together, conversations inevitably had less and less to do with work. It was on trips that required hotel stays that Sandra, usually over dinner, probed more deeply, more personally. Kevin didn’t even realize how much he was revealing about himself and his marriage until, one night, Sandra ordered a bottle of wine with dinner and told him all about her creep of an ex-husband. She probably hadn’t intended to plant seeds of doubt about his own marriage, but the fact that someone as smart as Sandra could be fooled by a cheating spouse for eleven years caused Kevin to think, if only for a minute or two, that if his own wife wasn’t putting any of her energy into their relationship, maybe there was something—or someone—he should know about. A few weeks later, he foolishly took up Sandra on an invitation to come back to her room to prepare for the next day’s meetings. They actually did work for a while, but after watching him check his cell phone at least a dozen times for
That wouldn’t stop him from trying again tomorrow night. Nor would it stop him from telling her how he felt—tonight.
“i’m so sorry,” he typed, then paused for several seconds. Rudy’s apology was a total non sequitur in the film debate, butif she was out there waiting in silence, she would know what he was talking about. She knew his screen name. She would know he was apologizing to her. And she would know what he was sorry about.
It was breaking protocol to use anything but a screen name, but invoking a real name might help convey the depth of his feelings.
“it’s from the heart, peyton,” he added, then clicked his mouse and exited the chat room.
9
HOME. AFTER THREE NIGHTS IN THE HOSPITAL, IT FELT GOOD TO BE there — for Kevin almost as much as Peyton.
Home was on Magnolia Street, two blocks north of famed Newbury Street, where magnificent old Victorian residences blended with new galleries, smart shops, and outdoor cafés that, especially in warmer weather, lent the area a certain continental élan. Even though it was pricey, Peyton had insisted on taking the apartment. Kevin knew her angle. He wasn’t happy about staying in Boston after she’d finished med school, so she dropped him right in the heart of what was considered the place for the young and chic to see and be seen.
Ironically, the accident afforded them their first real opportunity to share the place together, alone. Missing work to nurse his wife back to health had also helped Kevin keep his mind off his mistakes; it kept Sandra at bay.
Kevin didn’t fully understand the thing with Sandra, having never intended anything sexual between them. She was just good company and a good friend at Marston & Wheeler, a breath of fresh air at a law firm, where most associates competed like gladiators. Sandra had an unusual wisdom and maturity about her. Although she was just a second-year associate, she was ten years older than Kevin. After graduating from Columbia Law School, she’d given up a career to marry a widower and raise three stepchildren. Theywere driving home from Dartmouth, having just dropped off the youngest child for the fall semester, when her husband of twelve years told her about the lover he’d kept for the past eleven. To her credit, Sandra picked herself up and landed a job at Boston’s top law firm, starting at the bottom, determined to make up for the thirteen years she’d lost.
Kevin knew it was stupid to go to bed with a coworker, but that was actually what had made it so easy. When Kevin volunteered to work on the big bank-fraud investigation in Providence because “there was no one to go home to back in Boston anyway,” Sandra quickly convinced the senior partner to make her the junior associate on the case. She and Kevin worked long hours, just the two of them. After two months of traveling back and forth from Providence together, conversations inevitably had less and less to do with work. It was on trips that required hotel stays that Sandra, usually over dinner, probed more deeply, more personally. Kevin didn’t even realize how much he was revealing about himself and his marriage until, one night, Sandra ordered a bottle of wine with dinner and told him all about her creep of an ex-husband. She probably hadn’t intended to plant seeds of doubt about his own marriage, but the fact that someone as smart as Sandra could be fooled by a cheating spouse for eleven years caused Kevin to think, if only for a minute or two, that if his own wife wasn’t putting any of her energy into their relationship, maybe there was something—or someone—he should know about. A few weeks later, he foolishly took up Sandra on an invitation to come back to her room to prepare for the next day’s meetings. They actually did work for a while, but after watching him check his cell phone at least a dozen times for
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